The present invention relates to an optical disk image drawing method for forming a visible image (drawing an image) such as a picture, a character or the like on the surface of an optical disk and more particularly to an optical disk image drawing method for controlling an image drawing position by a laser beam outputted from one laser diode to draw an image by the laser beam.
JP-A-2002-203321 and JP-A-2005-346886 disclose a technique that an image drawing layer composed of a thermal sensitive layer or a photosensitive layer is formed on a surface of an optical disk such as a CD capable of recording or a DVD capable of recording, an optical disk recording device for recording data in a data recording layer of the optical disk is used as an optical disk image drawing device, and a laser beam modulated in accordance with image data is applied to the image drawing layer from an optical pick-up to draw an image on the image drawing layer. In the technique disclosed in JP-A-2002-203321, the front surface and the back surface of the optical disk are inverted relative to the arrangement of the optical disk at the time of recording data to draw an image. In the technique disclosed in JP-A-2005-346886, two laser diodes are mounted on one optical pick-up, laser beams (main beam) respectively outputted therefrom are made to be coaxial, the data is recorded on the data recording layer by the laser beam outputted from the first laser diode thereof, position information is detected from the data recording layer by the laser beam at that time, and the image is drawn at a predetermined position of the image drawing layer by the laser beam outputted from the second laser diode on the basis of the detected position information.
In the image drawing method disclosed in JP-A-2002-203321, when the image is to be drawn on the optical disk arranged for the recording of the data, the optical disk needs to be temporarily ejected from an optical disk device, the front surface and the back surface of the optical disk needs to be inverted and the optical disk needs to be inserted again into the optical disk device. Thus, an operation is troublesome. In the technique disclosed in JP-A-2005-346886, both the recording of the data and the image drawing can be advantageously carried out without inverting the front and back surfaces of the optical disk. However, since the position information is detected from the data recording layer by the laser beam outputted from the first laser diode and the image is drawn at the predetermined position on the basis of the position information detected by the laser beam outputted from the second laser diode, separate laser beams are required to draw the image for controlling an image drawing position and for drawing the image.